by Ramy Vance
“Please don’t,” he said, his eyes serious. “Those thoughts you accidently share are always the honest ones. This world needs more people saying what they think and thinking what they say. And as for my name: Old Librarian will do … for now.” He put out his hand.
I had never thought about it that way before, but he was right. Over my three hundred years, I had spent a lot of time without any living person in sight. Talking to myself was always a way to combat the loneliness. But what came out tended to upset me, and I’d have long, bitter arguments—my voice unwaveringly honest, versus my rationalizing, compromising inner thoughts.
I looked at his hand for a long moment before taking it in mine. “Nice to meet you, Old Librarian.”
“And nice to meet you, Peculiar Girl. Now that those pleasantries are out of the way, I wish to disagree with your earlier point. ‘Wait and see’ is not all they can do. Far from it.”
“I don’t see what else they can do. Not without causing a lot of harm to themselves.”
“True, change is hard. Still, there are ways to minimize the ire they will inevitably draw on themselves as they work for a brighter future. Organized protest and passive resistance, to name a couple.”
“Like the suffragettes and civil rights movements. Like Gandhi. Mandela.”
“Yes, but those are grand examples. Back when I ran my congregation, I saw many brave men and women who fought for equal rights in small but very meaningful ways. There were plenty of Rosa Parkses refusing to go to the back of the bus who never made it to the news. Plenty of brave souls who stood up to bullying without ever being recognized for their bravery. And no single one of them invoked change. But the sum of their deeds … that is another story altogether.”
I didn’t know what he meant by that, but I nodded anyway. I’d mull over his words later. Turning back to the book, I said, “If you’re right and he is Mergen’s avatar, we still don’t know what he eats. All it says is that he’s Turkish and that he’s the deity of Wisdom and Abundance.”
“That’s a start, isn’t it?”
“I guess.” I pulled my purse over my shoulder. I supposed figuring out what that poor Other ate would take some time. “Thank you,” I said, and started for the door. Then I stopped, with one more burning question I had to ask. “You referred to your congregation. So, you were a priest before, you know, you became the Old Librarian?” I said, smiling.
He stared at me over the rims of his glasses. “Who said I am no longer a priest?”
“You did. You referred to your congregation in the past tense.”
“Indeed—but only because the flock has thinned after God’s GrandExodus. But His absence doesn’t mean that I don’t have faith anymore. Quite the opposite, in fact. I now have proof that the God I devoted my life to is real.”
“And gone,” I said, regretting my words instantly. I was being rude.
He nodded at this, giving me a patient smile. “And gone—you are quite correct. But my faith was not contingent on His presence before He left. That has not changed just because I know He is gone.”
“So why have it? Faith. Sounds like an unnecessary burden.”
“Perhaps—but then again, our past defines our future, no matter how hard we try to bury it.”
I looked over at my father’s tartan. “Maybe. But some of that stuff is best left in the past.”
“Perhaps. But then again, perhaps not. You have a keen mind. Tell me, do you have a campus job, Miss …?”
“I thought we weren’t doing names, Old Librarian.”
“I promise to call you Peculiar Girl, no matter what your name is. I ask for different reasons.” He paused, waiting expectantly.
I obliged. “Darling. Katrina Darling.”
“What a pretty real name you have, Peculiar Girl,” he said, smirking but not unkindly. “You have a keen mind, and your banter is something I think I would enjoy. Do you have a job? Or rather, would you like one?”
“A job?”
“I need someone to help me catalog and organize this place. The pay is abysmal and the job can take you into the wee hours of the night—but you will have unfettered access to all this.” He gestured around him to the shelves of books bursting with knowledge and the display cases packed with history. “And perhaps we will have time to debate the past and contemplate the future while enjoying the present.”
That would be nice, I thought. “I like working nights,” I finally said. “I’m kind of an insomniac.”
“Very well then. I shall put your name down as the new assistant librarian. Officially it is ten hours a week, which means I will only pay you for a fraction of the time you’ll be working.”
“Great,” I said, wondering if great was the right response when basically agreeing to be an indentured slave.
“Great, indeed. Address?”
“Gardner Hall. Room 001.”
He wrote that down on a little notepad he’d pulled from his breast pocket and said, “You start tomorrow.”
Then he stuck out his hand. I shook it, and headed to the door. At the threshold, I stopped. I wanted to turn around and tell him how he had made this scared freshman feel welcome and how much I appreciated having not only a job but a bit of a purpose in my new life. But instead, all I mustered was an awkward “Ahh … thanks,” before leaving.
If I had known that would be the last time I’d see Old Librarian alive, I would have maybe tried to say something a little more meaningful.
And I would have asked him for his real name.
End of Part 1
PART II
INTERMISSION
He stands perfectly still in the moonlit night, near the statue of the university founder. He is under the canopy of the large oak tree and is facing east because, although it is near midnight, the moon has yet to fully rise. That will happen in the coming hour. For now, he stands and waits.
He waits for the moon.
And for it to call to him.
In the old days, he would have assumed the form of a hyena with his fellow pack members. They would have all faced west, just as he is now, together waiting for the moon to reach its apex. Then they would have sung out to her in pitch-perfect unison, thanking her for her lunar light under which they would hunt.
They would praise her beauty and love her for being the mother of night.
Then the pack would let the frenzy of the hunt take over.
But that was years ago, before the gods left. Now that the gods are gone, his pack has disbanded. Some embraced their humanity. Some left the old lands to seek new opportunities in this new GoneGod World. Some refused to accept the change and still go out nightly to praise the moon goddess. And some could not handle the change, choosing forever-lasting death over this new life.
But Egya—Egya is different. A hybrid among his fellow hyenas. He chose to both embrace his humanity and honor his past. The gods may be gone—but the moon goddess still hangs above him. Of that much he is sure.
The moon is nearing her apex—in moments she will have fully risen. Egya is preparing his howl, summoning the low, guttural hum within.
It is good that he is alone in this field. His roar is mighty and it would scare any human unfortunate enough to happen by.
But just as he is about to unleash his howl, he sniffs someone approaching.
He does not need to see her to know who she is: the Other pretending to be a human. The one who lost her magic, just like him. Moving with the silence of an experienced predator, he stalks around the tree, out of her sight. There he stands perfectly still, tracking her movements not with sight and only partially with hearing.
He mostly tracks her with smell. The gods may have taken his hyena form from him, but they did not take his superior sense of smell—not all of it, at least.
She stops by the statue, some trace of her former instinct telling her someone is near. But she embraces her human side far too much, and she suppresses her instincts, choosing to ignore them and move on, rather than st
ay and explore possible dangers.
Egya lets out a low, disapproving growl. Her past—her Otherness—it is a gift. A gift she denies.
And this angers the former were-hyena.
This angers him greatly.
DAYSTALKER, NIGHTWALKER
I t was dusk when I left the Old Librarian, and so I engaged in another one of my quirks from my vampire days. The long walk in the dark. You know, the whole creature of the night wandering around at night. Cliché, I know, but it was my jam.
My jam? Did that refer to jam as in a band jamming, or jam on toast? Or both. And when was my jam in? Argh, I needed elocution lessons. Actually I needed slang lessons, but somehow I didn’t think the university offered those.
Looking at my wristwatch I saw that I had been wandering around for quite some time. It was almost midnight. But I didn’t feel like going home. Not yet. But where could you go at this time of night on a Tuesday?
Most of the campus would be closed. The only place still open was Gerts, the campus bar, and given that it was the first day of classes and a school night, I guessed even Gerts wouldn’t be open for much longer. Besides, I didn’t feel like a drink even though I was of the legal age according to the mortal law in the Quebec province. Here you only needed to be eighteen to drink. Younger than most places. It’s the French influence, I guessed.
Regardless, I was nineteen.
By now, I’m sure you would correct me on that one: I was actually over three hundred years old. But the way I figured it, I was—biologically speaking—still only nineteen. I was turned at fifteen, so I figured that when I returned to being human again, I would start aging from that point. I’d been human for four years since the GrandExodus—so four plus fifteen. Nineteen.
My math skills were impeccable. I was sure to make the dean’s list.
Anyway, that’s how I saw it, but I wasn’t sure how the rest of the world saw it. You see, ever since the Others came, mortal law had been challenged on multiple levels. Legal definitions had to be broadened and bastardized and reevaluated to include Earth’s newest residents.
But society was still too busy dealing with angels, minotaurs, wendigos, avatars and all sorts of OnceImmortals. We half-breeds were largely ignored—partly because we were technically human, but mostly because we never went into the limelight. After centuries of hiding from humans, we were pretty good at confining ourselves to the darkness.
I WALKED down the hill toward the university’s main campus and took a deep breath. Autumn was on its way, which, in Montreal, meant that real cold was coming. Montreal was a university town with four major universities within its city limits. I went to McGill—the best of the bunch (or at least that’s what other McGill students say).
Montreal itself wasn’t a bad place to live. European feel with North American sensibility; friendly people, not too smug; lots of bars, clubs and other places for frustrated locals to let off some steam. When I was a vampire, this would have been ideal hunting grounds. As a student, Montreal was ideal party grounds. Funny how the two go hand in hand.
But partying and hunting aside, what made Montreal special was that it was built on (and around) an inactive volcano. I wished it were a dead volcano, but it wasn’t. Not that anyone was worried, though. Montreal’s volcano hadn’t shown any sign of activity since I was born—yeah, three centuries ago. That was a good indicator that it was safe enough, right?
Then again …
Four years ago, mythical creatures barely showed any activity on Earth either.
And look where we were now.
But still, a volcano was a volcano, and the locals, several decades ago, had decided to hedge their it-won’t-erupt bets by putting a cross at its very top. A Christian, neon-lit, bigger-than-an-upright-bus, vampire-burning cross.
And this was the city I chose to move to?
What’s more—I actually lived on the volcano. If you walked up the hill, past the Royal Vic Hospital, past the McGill football stadium, you entered McGill University dorm territory. If this volcano erupted soon, we freshmen would be the first victims. Seems fitting, if you think about it.
McConnell, Molson, Gardner and Douglas Halls all sat about halfway up the hill, along with a large circular cafeteria that was cutting-edge architectural design … in the 1950s. I lived in Gardner—the dorm that was the absolute closest you could find to that beacon of a cross.
Every time I trekked up the hill, staring at the cross, I would just think to myself that moving here had been some inner penitence or something. You don’t spend three centuries as a murderous immortal demon without developing your inner masochist.
I walked onto the main campus field, which never seemed to close—too many late-night studies—and passed by James McGill’s statue. The Scotsman explorer was a short, stout man, holding his pioneer hat against the wind, cane planted firmly on the ground in one hand, the other pointing straight ahead. It wasn’t a grand statue or anything. The guy was my height, and I was born in eighteenth-century Scotland—we were a lot shorter than today’s average human.
I gave my fellow Highlander a pat on the head. Immediately, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. In the past, that was what happened when danger or potential prey was nearby, like a vampire’s sixth sense. Maybe late-night studiers were finally going home, or perhaps two lovebirds were making out in the moonlight.
But I saw no moonlight lovers, no late-night studiers walking home, nobody. In fact, I noticed for the first time that everything around me was eerily dark—no lights, no noise, all the buildings long abandoned.
I take that back. There was one light on the main floor of the Other Studies Library. I guess my senses were on the fritz.
Oh, well.
I peered closer at the Other Studies building. Seems the Old Librarian was still working, and I wondered if he’d be up for a visit. Maybe he would finally be able to tell me how he got my father’s tartan.
“Besides,” I thought (out loud, probably), “I’m his newest employee … and technically it is tomorrow.”
THE LIBRARY HAD one of those old wooden church doors. From the front, I couldn’t see inside—all the large windows were on the sides of the building, with only two slender, stained-glass displays flanking the entrance.
I tried the door. Locked.
I jogged back to where I’d been to look up at the window again, but there wasn’t enough light to make out what was happening inside. At this point, I usually would have just given up and called it a night, but I wasn’t especially looking forward to finding Deirdre naked in our dorm again (I swear! I wasn’t!), and something about this whole thing was starting to make me feel uneasy. That vampire sixth sense again, maybe? I jogged to the front door once more and, pulling back on the iron knocker just within reach, I knocked and waited.
Nothing.
I was about to give up, when I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. When I was a predator, those hairs had saved me more than once. Up until now, I had assumed they were a part of my vampiric nature. Either I had carried over some of that nature with me or that tingly feeling had been my human part all along.
Either way, I had learned to trust that instinct. The door was locked, nobody was answering the knocker … I scrutinized every inch of the door and the surrounding facade, until I spotted a mail flap near the bottom of the door. I pushed it open and peered inside. Two desk lamps were lit in the study area, but from this angle, their light only revealed a couple of cushy armchairs and an empty fireplace. Nothing of interest.
But I could smell something.
A smell I knew very well.
Human blood.
VAMPIRES AREN’T ONLY HUMANS
Human blood. Unmistakable … I should know. I’d only spent the last few centuries guzzling it down like a camel in a desert. A … vampire camel? Whatever. Poor simile, but you get the point.
Smelling it as a human was completely different than drinking it as a vampire. As a vampire, the smell excited me, intoxicate
d me—drove me mad with insatiable desire. But as a human, the smell of blood made me retch, and the thought of tasting the crimson liquid made my stomach twist with nausea.
Get over it, girl, I thought as I tried to find a way into the library. It’s probably nothing too serious. I tried to comfort myself with the thought that the Old Librarian had merely fallen and hit his head. That the smell of blood came from a head wound, not a gaping throat or severed carotid artery. A few stitches and a concussion would be the worst that he’d suffer.
But the smell was way too strong for that … and as much as I tried to lie to myself that he’d be fine, I’d been involved in enough death to know better.
The Old Librarian was dead. The part of me that was still vampire knew that.
The human part of me, on the other hand, still clung on to hope.
I pulled at the door handle again—no good. I’d need a battering ram to get through this heavy wooden door. If only I still had my vampiric strength. But what I lacked in strength, I made up for in smallness. The windows that ran along the side of the door were narrow, barely the size of a dinner plate. But I could work with that. Now all I needed was something to smash the window with. I ran to the path leading up to the library and picked up a heavy stone lining the flower bed. Rushing back to the door, I hefted the stone and smashed it through the window.
Then, taking off my Hermes jacket—still muddy from Deirdre’s home decor—I wrapped it around my arm and cleared the rest of the glass, silently lamenting the lacerations the leather suffered from the process. I’d definitely have to buy a new one now. Good thing I had money—and lots of it. Three hundred years of antique collecting and compound interest tends to do that.